Wine Recommendations for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is coming in three weeks.  What wine(s) do you plan to serve with your Thanksgiving dinner this year?  Have you bought them yet?  There are lots of alternatives.  Below is a download where I recommend about 45 different wines that I think pair very well with turkey. 

Most people associate poultry with white wine, following the white meat – white wine guidance.  But this is not a rule, and turkey does have delicious dark meat as well.    My recommendations start with three white wines: Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, and Riesling.  I am also recommending you consider a dry Rose and/or a medium bodied Pinot Noir.  Both also pair very well with turkey.  The prices shown in the attachment are rough averages of what the larger online stores are selling them for.  There can certainly be a variation of a few dollars, depending on your state and what store you pick.  Taxes and shipping, if ordering online, are additional.

One common theme in my blog posts on wine is that Americans drink their white wine much too cold and their red wine at too warm a temperature.  White wines should be drunk at 60° F.  Most refrigerators are at about 48° and taking wine out of the refrigerator and pouring it blocks off much of the delightful taste of that white wine.  I highly recommend taking white wine out of the refrigerator, opening it, and let it sit on the counter to breathe and open up for 30 minutes before serving it.  If you don’t believe me, try this experiment.  Get two bottles of the same wine and open one of them and let it sit on the counter for 30 minutes.  Then open the second right from the refrigerator.  Compare the tastes, the first one with have many more tastes than the second one. 

Good red wines served at room temperature are also hiding much of their flavors.  Winemakers usually finalize their wine by blending wines from different grapes or using the same grape but from several properties.  The wines have aged in barrels in the cellar which is at 60° F.  The winemakers are tasting the wine at that temperature when they finalize their wine.  Serving red wines that have had the time to open up and that are at 60° will let you taste what the winemaker wants you to drink.   You will get the most flavor out of the Pinot Noir that is the last set of recommended wines below if you open the bottle and let it breathe 3-4 hours before serving and then put it in the refrigerator, open and standing up, for 30 minutes to get the wine to 60° F before serving it  Try the same kind of experiment with two bottles of a red wine to see how big a difference it will make. One question I frequently get when I recommend wines is, “Where can we find them?” Unless your local liquor store is a very good wine store, they probably will have only a few of the recommendations in the handout.  Here is a link to the blog post I did on different ways to find the wines. https://billwinetravelfood.com/2023/07/29/where-do-i-find-the-wines-that-are-being-recommended/

Also available for download is my recipe for Roast Turkey.  Beth and I were married in 1971 when I was a grad student at Columbia and she was entering the Navy Nurse Corps.  She was on duty on our first Thanksgiving Day. so I volunteered to cook a turkey instead of going out to eat when she got home from the hospital.  The turkey was golden brown, moist, and delicious.  At the end of the meal she looked at me and said that she was never roasting a turkey and, 52 years later, she has held firm to that.  For the last 16 years I have been blessed to have different grandchildren cook the turkey with me, so the recipe and tradition are being handed down.  In the below blog post are lots of pictures that may be a good compliment to the recipe if you download it. https://billwinetravelfood.com/2022/11/14/thanksgiving-roast-turkey/

I hope the two attachments add to your enjoyment of Thanksgiving.  Your comments and feedback are always appreciated.